This invention relates to a monitor control apparatus for crime prevention and, more particularly, to a monitor control apparatus capable of detecting movements within designated areas of visitors to a building to determine the behavior thereof so as to execute predetermiend functions when the behavior of a visitor is of a suspicious nature;
Recently, crimes committed within and/or in the vicinity of buildings have increased drastically to pose a social problem. For example, criminals may attack passengers (especially, women) in an elevator cage in the vicinity of an elevator hall, a landing, a passageway or namely, places near a building which are not conspicuous at night. On the other hand, other crimes, such as robberies, are often committed in public areas, such as department stores, shops or office buildings where individuals other than working employees can freely come and go.
As measures for preventing such crimes from being committed inside and outside a building and especially in the vicinity of an elevator certain procedures, such as disclosed in "Elevator Crime Preventive Measure Standards for Apartment Buildings", an article prepared by the Japan Elevator Association, has been contemplated. According to this document, a hall door with glass windows is provided in addition to a cage door. The cage is stopped at each floor to allow easy inspection of the interior of the cage from outside. An alarm pushbutton switch is disposed on the cage call panel so as to permit a passenger in trouble to inform others outside the cage of any abnormality or lifethreatening circumstances occurring to him (or her) inside the cage. Further, there has recently been proposed a system (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 59-128178) wherein a television camera is mounted in a cage to visually monitor the interior of the cage by transmitting the images thereof to responsible personnel. In another crime prevention apparatus, devices for detecting any abnormality in a cage, such as a large vibration, (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 59-100078) or change of light reflected from an edged tool carried by a criminal (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 58-109373) are provided to alert responsible personnel that a criminal act is in process. Under these circumstances the cage is stopped at the nearest floor, its door opened, and an alarm issued.
For residential buildings an "interphone autolock system" is often utilized. Under this system, a visitor notifies the host in a desired dwelling by the use of a group interphone installed outside the building. To acknowledge the visit, the host depresses an entrance opening button in his/her room to unlock the main entrance door of the building. This system often works quite effectively in crime prevention since only authorized visitors are allowed access to the building after direct contact with the acknowledgement from the host. There has also been put into practical use a crime prevention apparatus wherein an infrared sensor, an ultrasonic sensor, a motor-operated sensor, or the like is disposed in places, such as doors or windows, so that, when an invader or an unauthorized entry is detected, a warning is issued or an alarm is activated to inform appropriate personnel.
However, above-described crime prevention monitoring systems include various shortcomings. For the system which monitors the interior of the elevator cage, continuous monitoring by appropriate authorities must be provided around the clock and personnel must be continually on guard to make the system effective. This approach is often quite expensive and therefore impractical. Also it is often late at night when no one monitors the cage, or when the caretaker is off guard that crimes are committed. As for the systems which include an alarm pushbutton switch or detect abnormal vibrations and changes in reflected light in the cage, the victim often is deprived of freedom of movement or is exposed to fear, and hence, he/she is often unable to depress the alarm pushbutton switch or to make noise and vibrations. Also, during the entire course of the crime the weapons or tools which reflect light may not be exposed to make the system effective. Furthermore, since the detection occurs after the criminal act has already been committed, the victim is already terrified and may experience shock or lasting psychological effect.
With the "interphone autolock system" which prevents a suspicious person from entering the building, it is often the case that the would-be criminal will wait for the arrival of an inhabitant or an acknowledged visitor to enter the building upon the unlocking of the entrance door.
As for the system using sensors, it is often too late when action is taken after the operation of the sensor, and a system which detects a suspicious person at an early stage has been desired. In this respect, it is also desirable to expand the detection range of the crime preventive sensor so as to cover a place for common use. Since, however, the place for common use is also utilized by general people bearing no criminal intention, generating
As described above, the crime preventive monitor systems of the prior art have had the problem that they cannot early detect a person acting strangely from among people acting in an ordinary way and cannot provide a warning or an alarm promptly.